232 ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book IV. 



rate ftate, and after death, is, by its operations in that death of each 

 day's life, as Shakcfpeare defcribes Sleep, the reader, I am perfua- 

 ded, will not be difpleafed that I return again to the fubjcdl, and 

 beftow a whole Chapter upon it. I do it the rather, that I think it 

 will make ftill more evident the diftin£lion I have endeavoured 

 to eftablifla betwixt our Animal and Intelledual Nature. 



That Dreams of all kinds, whatever way they come to us, whe- 

 ther through the gate of Horn or Ivory, or whether, to fpeak 

 plainly, they are mere idle fancies or of fome Truth and Reality, 

 have their feat in that part of the Mind which is called the Phanta-- 

 Jxa or Imagination, is acknowledged by every body. I will therefore 

 begin this inquiry with examining the nature of this wonderful fa- 

 culty of the Mind, and which, as I have faid elfewhere *, prefents 

 to us fuch ftrange fcenes, both fleeping and waking, that it may not 

 improperly be called the magic lanthorn of the Mind.. 



It is by this faculty that the want of the ufe of our Senfes is fup- 

 •plied ; for, by the means of it, we perceive objeds of Senfe, both 

 .when we have no ufe of our Senfes, as in Sleep, and when the ob- 

 jeds are out of the reach of them, which is the cafe of our Imagi- 

 nations when we are awake. But, though it operate without the 

 Senfes, it has fuch a connedion with them, and dependence upon 

 them> that it never prefents to us any objeds but thofe which we 

 have, either at fome time or another, adually perceived by our Sen- 

 fes, or which are of the fame nature with our perceptions of Senfe, but 

 magnified or dirainifhed, or put together in forms and fhapes differ- 

 ent from any thing that is to be feen in Nature. This manner of o- 

 perating of the Phantafia is not only to be obferved in our Dreams, 

 b'.it alfo when we are awake : For what we call caftle-building is of 

 that kind ; and a I'oet is nothing elfe but a fkilful caftle-builder. 



It is therefore true, what I have elfewhere obferved, that the 

 Phantafia, however various and wonderful its operations may be, 

 prefents to us no new objed of Senfe, or, to fpeak more accurately, 

 no objed of a new Senfe. So that what the Schoolmen fay of the 



Intelled 



• Vol. I- page 90. 



